When a friend described himself as a fatalist, I didn’t ask him to define the term because I understood what he meant. He was saying it doesn’t pay to philosophize or speculate as to the direction of history, or for that matter, the direction of one’s life. Things are going to be just as we discover them to be from day to day, and that’s good enough. In other words, the panorama from day to day satisfies the eye completely, and besides, how could anyone figure out the direction it’s all going in, or for that matter, if there is a direction. History’s directionlessness is fully disclosed by John Gray.If I understand correctly, he seems inclined to a view that the history of humankind is heading towards its end, in contradistinction to the view expressed by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature. In John Gray’s view there’s nothing out there to suggest the violent tendencies of the human being have become more temperate, nor that evolution will soon wash us clean of such tendencies.

He’s more inclined to see our affairs ending in a fireball than in a love-in. Rabbi D once said he thought the increase in abortion had greatly contributed to a decrease in violent crime in Los Angeles. Mothers had been aborting unwanted babies for a generation or two and it showed. American society does appear to have grown less violent, but who is to say why.